


tears from me shall salt the sea

by Dardarot



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fairy Tale, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - The Little Mermaid Fusion, F/M, I added another chapter after breaking the 3rd one into 2, Little Mermaid Rey, Sea Serpent Kylo Ren, The last one warrants the E rating, because I live for the size difference, but I'm still working on it, inspired by afterblossom's cute-tastic comic
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-03
Updated: 2018-12-13
Packaged: 2019-09-06 09:11:53
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 3,149
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16829566
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dardarot/pseuds/Dardarot
Summary: a Little MerREY & Sea RENpent tale inspired by Tumblr user afterblossom





	1. I

**Author's Note:**

> “But a mermaid has no tears, and therefore she suffers so much more.”
> 
> ― Hans Christian Andersen, 'The Little Mermaid'

There is little the sea hasn’t stolen from the heavens. The color, she has to, for she’s only as blue as the sky is clear. And the winds, she must, for she cannot wave to the Moon on her own. And she needs her light most of all.

On moonless nights, she waves all the same. She waves and waves _and waves_ in vain. That is why she takes whatever the land sets afloat on her waters. And she takes and takes and takes. Pirates and princes alike, they all put up the same failing fight.

Rey knows this. She knows the sea, she knows of her frothing felonies, and certainly knows of her temperamental tides. She has been thought about currents and crimes before she was thought how to navigate them.

She was but a hatchling when her mother and father swam off to richer reefs, leaving her in the fins of the blobfish, Unkar Plutt.

“The sea is a cruel mistress, girl,” he’d say to the fry. “She takes and takes _and takes_. So be sure to grab whatever you can,” he’d grab whatever she had scavenged from the shipwrecks and pay her in the spawns of the salvaged scallops he kept hidden from the rest of the sandbank.

So Rey did. She took and she took and she gave it all up for a fin-full of food. But she kept some for herself. She had a scrap of white sailcloth she wrapped around her breasts and a shiny silver plate she watched them grow in. She had a small soldier made of tin and her most priceless possession: a petrified human prince.

She couldn’t move him from the ship he sunk in, but he couldn’t let anyone else have him either. So she moved in with him, talked to him, grew up with him. When she joined Mon Cala’s school, leaving Niima Sandbank and the Blobfish Boss behind, she went to talk to him one last time. “I met another merperson,” she swam her usual rounds around the statue. “They call him Finn. And we both met another, a mermaid just like me,” she floundered when she reached his face. He looked sad. He always looked sad, her drowning prince. “I’ll come visit. I promise.”

Rey knows the sea. She knows she took her parents away. She knows it took others parents and she knows she took her, too. But she does give back. The merpeople of Mon Cala thought her that. They thought her how vast and wide she is. They thought her how giving she is. They thought her where to find the most succulent scallop.

“Don’t wander off too far,” Rose rode the current that carried them to the school’s favorite clam. “We have to head back soon.”

“I won’t,” she waved them off with her tail before taking off.

Rey knows better than this. She knows she needn’t go on her own anymore. She knows she shouldn’t go anywhere alone. The sea can never steal enough light and it’s already fading. Rey knows all of this, yet she still swims after a springing scallop. She know this, yet she still trails it down a deep, deep trench.

That’s how she wandered into the wicked weeds where nobody could see and got her tail trapped where nobody could hear her scream. The more she trashed against them, the tighter they tied around her. The louder she got, the more suffocating the silence became.

And the darkness only grew greater.

It grew a pair of eyes that shone without stealing any light. It grew a tail the size of which could never wind up in seaweed. And, to her horror, it grew claws that could never be contained.

There was not a shriek left in her lungs once the darkness enveloped her, but there was enough room to roll her dorsal fin away from the algae.

The Darkness had a hand from which the claws came out and he used them to cut her loose. It had an arm, white against the black of the tenebrous talons, against the stretch of his colossal caudal and his long locks.

“Are you the Serpent? _The_ Sea Serpent?”

“You’re,” the serpent spoke and his voice was strained from what sounded a century of silence. “You’re not afraid?”

Rey knew the stories. She knew just who he was, knew she should swim right out of that hellish hole and knew she should be afraid. Very afraid. Yet, she wasn’t.

“Why would I be? You just saved my life.”

“I…I did,” he stuttered where he stood, still new to speech.

“Thank you,” she searched her satchel, one of the few shipwreck treasures she took with her, for the clam that led her into his lair. “Do you like scallops?”

“Scallop,” he tastes the consonance on the tip of his tongue, his lips full while forming the vowels. They were both as red as the line that cut through his white brow and cheek and all the way down to his chest. His shoulders were even wider and his hand, stretching towards the scallop managed to dwarf it and her both. “Thank. You.”

“ _Rey, where are you? Reeey?_ ”

“Oh,” she retreats from his reach at the sound of Roses screech. “I have to go.”

“No,” his eyes follow her journey out of the darkness and back into the light. “Come back.” But he makes no move to follow himself.

“I will,” she turns on her tail to face the famed fiend and finds the sad eyes of a petrified prince instead. “I promise.”


	2. II

“ _The sea is a cruel mistress_ ,” the little mermaid tried on a timbre too big for her. “That’s what Unkar Plutt used to say,” her tiny nose scrunches up her small face. “She’s been cruel to you, hasn’t she, Mr. Sea Serpent?”

He thinks that she must be. He hasn’t been thinking of much else since she dropped him into the darkness. He thinks that if she is everyone’s mistress then she must be a cruel one. But then he looks at himself, at the blackness of his scales, at the sharpness of his talons and at his crossed tiles. And he thinks that he must have deserved it.

“I,” he pries away from the pity in the small pits of her eyes. “I’m a monster. I’m supposed to be by my own. This is not my home. This is my _prison_.”

He thinks that hell must be this hole. He hasn’t been thinking much else since he stopped scrapping segments into the stone, since he forgot what he was supposed to forget. He thinks he must have always been on his own; he must have always been in this abyss. But then he looks at her, his little light, and her little face dimming and thinks that he mustn't be; not any more.

“Please,” he panics at the reflection of his pain in her eyes. “Do not cry,” his hands hang helplessly between them. “I…I…”

“You _what_?”

“I wanted to wipe away your tears away,” the Sea Serpent shies away. “But my claws…my claws are…”

“Give me your hand,” her much smaller, much softer arm arrests his. “Give it to me.”

He thinks that she must be mad – madder than him. He thinks she must be trying to nudge her own eyes – her bright, beautiful eyes – with his nails. He thinks she cannot stand the sight of him anymore. But she knocks her cheek against his knuckles and rubs. She rubs until the rivulets turn into strings of pearls. They shine almost as brightly as their owner’s eyes.

“See? You can do it. You just have to be careful.” 

“I see,” he rolls the last of the tears off her cheeks. “I would rather not see you crying. Or taste you crying. I can taste the saltiness in the water.”

“If you have a problem with the taste of salt,” she sets his hand aside and stays still beside. “Then get out of the sea, Mr. _Sea_ Serpent.”

He thought he had forgotten how to smile. There is an ache in the creases of his cheeks as his lips lean into them. There is a foreign feeling that makes all the pain more pleasurable to accompany it. He thinks that he mustn't be on his own; not anymore.

“Kylo Ren,” his enormous palm engulfs hers. “My name is Kylo Ren.”

“Oh,” her pretty little lips wrapped around the vowel. It was the same vowel he heard before she was taken away by the light. “I’m Rey.”

“ _Rey_ ,” his own lips were stuck in their upstretched setting.

Kylo Ren thought he knew. He thought he knew where he belonged. He thought he was alone down there in the dark and he thought the light was never to be touched. But here she was; _Rey_ was touching him.

“You’re not alone, _Kylo Ren_ ,” Rey reaches for his other hand to hold.

“Neither are you, _Rey_ ” Kylo Ren runs his tremendous thumb over her petit palm.

The little mermaid’s mouth is open in an “O” and he knows that she is hungry.

When she sucks out those scallops through their shells, she lets her little lips form the same letter. But there was no serving of scallops in sight and he had just witnessed her gulp down a gallon of them. There was nothing to behold but his big, broad chest and the way it expands and compresses under her small, sparkling eyes. And he knew that he was just as hungry.

The sea serpent knew this was the part where they would be separated again. He knew his little light had spend too much time in the dark and he knew he was the one to have dragged her down. But he didn’t want to release her hands, he didn’t want to let her eyes escape his beastly body and the way it almost looked beautiful in them. And he didn’t want to let her go.

“Mr. Sea– _umm_ ,” she swims up to face him despite her size. “Mr. Kylo Ren, I have to–”

“No,” he seeks the small set of her lips. “Don’t go,” his own are big and pursed as they pass out bubbles between them.

And that is how the sea serpent ate the little mermaid whole. With one of his huge hands on the small of her back and the other on the tiny trace of her tail, he devoured her miniature mouth.

“Rey? Rey, are you down there?”

“Don’t go,” he begs her as if she wasn’t at his massive mercy. “ _Please_.” 

“Come with me,” she doesn’t move from under his mass. “Come meet my friends. They’ll be your friends, too,” her hands are not big enough to hold his face between, but Rey runs her fingers through his fins as if they were. “We’ll never have to be alone again.”


	3. III

He let her short arms sink into his long locks. Rey wondered if she would ever stop to wander about Kylo Ren. About his deep, sad eyes, about his wide, white chest and about his big, burning mouth. It was red and ready to taste hers once more. Just once more.

"I am a monster, didn't you hear me?"

He drifted away from her, determination in his eyes. He never looked so mad, her monster. He denied her his big head of hair and denied her his huge hand. He even denied tiny, trembling lips another hungry, heated kiss.

”I cannot leave down here. I cannot live up there.”

He denied her.

“I heard you,” her small hands shrunk away from him. “I heard you.”

“Do not cry,” his long fingers lingered between them, his claws curling inward after she denied him in turn. “ _Please_ do not cry for me.”

She continued to deny him. She denied him her tears even as they turned to opalescent orbs.

In the fading light above, Finn joined Rose and two shadows became one. “ _Rey!_ ”

“Your friends,” he slithered back into the shadows from whence he came. “Go on and join your friends,” he dived into the darkness from which he was born, the same darkness that swallowed her and her scallops whole. “The sun is almost down.”

He had rescued her from it once before. It was her turn to return the favor.

“ _Rey, are you down there?”_

“You’re not the scary serpent they said you were,” she swam in the wake of his scales. “You’re not the monster you think you are,” she lost track of his tail as they were losing daylight.

“ _Rey, where are you going?”_

“I’ve seen who you really are,” the little mermaid was met with the pair of eyes that pierced the darkness of the pit the first time it dragged her into its depths. “Why won’t you let my friends see?”

A voice that vibrated up her vertebrae answered.

“Because all there is to see–”

All daylight was lost and with it, Kylo Ren. The sea returned to her the only creature that could ever afford to live in this abyss. With a muzzle big enough to mutilate a whale and teeth sharp enough to rip a shark to shreds, the sound of him crawled up her spine.

“–is the scary sea serpent they know me to be.”


	4. IV

The sea wasn't his mistress, nor will she ever be. 

  
“How long do you think you’ve been down here, my son?”

  
The Sorcerer Snoke, was only the second soul to not be scared off by the Sea Serpent. The first was a little mermaid – his little mermaid. The same little mermaid that searched all seven seas for the old octopoda and his marine magicks.

  
“My entire life?”

  
“Is that an answer, or a question?”

  
“I don’t have the answer,” he held onto his little mermaid, his Rey. His Rey had reached for him and he let her latch onto his long fingers with her short ones. Of course he did.

“Is that not why you are here? To give me answers?”

  
“I’m here to lift the curse,” one of his tentacles traced the wall tallies in a moment where it took him days, months and years to do the same. “Seven hundred years,” the same appendage arched back around so the others could stretch out around their owner. All seven of them. "It's been seven hundred years since I put the curse on you."

There was never a mistress, but there was always a master: _the sun_. He had been raised under him and above her: the sea.

She called to him much to his mother's terror and his father's thrill. Captain Han Solo hadn't always been the prince-consort of the Queen of Alderaan. He had been a pirate. And Her Majesty Leia hadn't always been part of the House Organa. She was once the bastard daughter of the Sky Walker Wyrm, the Sea Serpent that sank her adoptive family's fleets. Sky Walker had grown feet and a " _primitive phallus",_ as the Sorcerer put it, for long enough to seduce and impregnate a human female. A queen.

She called to him with the voice of his grandfather. It called to him with the promise of belonging. So she heeded her call and forsake his kingdom, his people and his master the Sun. He sunk his father's old pirate ship much like the Sky Walker Wyrm had before his uncle harpooned it. He sunk the Millennium Falcon and himself along with it.

"Curse?" The sea serpent, the half-human, the last prince of Alderaan, looked at the terrifying talons he called hands and saw nothing but a crime against nature. Then he looked at the tender thread of flesh she called her own hands and saw his little mermaid. He saw his light. Rey. She scrunched her tiny nose up her small face like she was about to pour out pearls. But she didn't. She didn't cry no matter how hard she tried. "I'm cursed? You cursed me?"

"Didn't your little friend tell you?" The Sorcerer of the Seven Seas snickered with a sickening sort of glee. "Your human heritage has made a mockery of me. Your half-bred uncle had skewered his own father, my own _monster._ Your mother married a _biped_ that bred her. When you were born, I knew I had my _creature_ back. Tell him, little mermaid."

"Rey," his fingers faltered as they came close to her cheeks. They were red with the strain of all the salty tears she couldn't stream. "What have you done to Rey?"

"The fry came to me crying more pearly beads than I could count with either of my limbs," Snoke smiled and it was a sinister sight. "I made her promise them all to me along with her voice. Now she can't weep or wail at the sight of you, my monster."

"Why would you do that, Rey?" 

Rey opened her minuscule mouth, but no sound came out. No tiny tears or puny pearls for his colossal knuckles to knock off of her small face.

"Give back what you took away, Sorcerer!"

"I didn't take anything that wasn't given to me willingly," he willed his appendages to arrest her arms and drag her down. "Isn't that right, little mermaid?"

"Do not touch her," he hissed like slithering snake Snoke made him.

"Patience, my child," his hands caressed her cheek with more cruelty than care. "She'll be all yours once I'm done with her."

"Do. Not. Touch. Her."

There was always a master: the sun. And when the sun sunk beyond where the sea could reach, Kylo Ren, the Sea serpent, the Sorcerer's Snoke monster came out of his dark cavern. 

That was what the merpeople whispered to each other about. That's what the little mermaid been warned about. That's what he was. 

"Do. Not." He snapped his jaw just below the slimy sorcerer's shriveled torso. "Touch. Her." He didn't even chew his slimy tentacles - he just let them slide down his throat.

Now it was Snoke's turn to give up his bubbling bodily fluids and voice. He would have even thought the blobs of blood beautiful if Rey weren't there to scream a stream of beads for him.

"Mr. Sea Serpent!"

"Ben," he bumped into her bubbly little body with his big burly maw. "My name is Ben Solo."

She didn't swim away from him or his gigantic jaw or his razor sharp smile. She didn't, not even when his titanic tongue made its way around her midriff and creeped up her chest before it traced her teary face. 

"Ben Solo," she leaned into his licks and gave and returned with one of her own. "You're the prince," her tiny tongue tangled with the tip of him. "You're my drowning prince."

There was never a mistress, but if there had been, it would have been Rey. His little mermaid.


End file.
